Monday, April 27, 2009

H4 - The Tyrant of France



The above picture is of a chap called Robespierre (well, an actor portraying him, at the very least). As I have said, I know next to nothing of this era in French history, so, to me, the name Robespierre has only ever meant "some character in a Doctor Who story that doesn't exist in the archives in its entirety anymore and the only reason I know anything about him and the surrounding story is because of Peter Haining".

I'm doing my best to follow along with this story, but I'm not having much luck. As I'm watching this, I feel like I'm in the middle of a history lecture that I was 20 minutes late for, and there's no one next to me writing notes for me to sneak a peak at in an attempt to catch up. In other character news, though, Barbara, now out of the grasp of the probably increasingly lecherous Ian, latches on to one of the first men she meets in France, namely Leon Colbert, and has an almost instant attraction towards him. He, likewise, returns the advance in that cool, subtle 1960's TV way, but I can't help think that Barbara is using Leon to hammer the point home to Ian that the two teachers are "just friends".

Susan is sick. Still. And all three companions are captured/imprisoned/recaptured in no particular order while they stay out of the way of history taking its natural course. The inept jailer seems to be amusing everyone with his antics, though, and William Hartnell shines, as usual. But.......sigh. Two more episodes to go.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm watching the Loose Cannon recon of this and I cant help but laugh at their over use of the 2 seconds of footage that remain of a door opening & closing.

Anonymous said...

Not to be difficult, but could you really not spend 10 minutes on Google to look up what was going on in the French Revolution? Big Finish did a story about the real Dracula (he really existed!) and Time spent on Wikipedia opened my eyes not only to the horrors of medieval Europe (Hitler was a gentleman in comparison to them) but also the conflict between Europe and Asia, which really makes The Crusade easier to follow too.

A little research goes a long way to understanding.

konberg said...

I'm amused by the reconstruction: That they repeatedly use the same clip of a door opening, even so far as to run it backwards to have some slightly different animation to show.

Also, rumpio's suggestion to spend some time on Wikipedia was a good one. A little knowledge has helped me with context, but it also doesn't seem to have made a difference in basic story comprehension.

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